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API Acceleration

Optimize API performance and availability while enhancing user experiences

Free Trial

Take control of your APIs

Deliver consistent, secure API experiences with route optimization, response caching, and scalable authentication. API Acceleration enhances performance during peak events, reduces origin load, and maintains predictable cloud infrastructure costs with a 100% uptime SLA. With serverless capabilities and IP-based access control, it streamlines development and protects your origin infrastructure.

Read product brief

Accelerate API performance at scale

Boost API performance at the edge

Deliver highly reliable digital experiences with intelligent routing and fast API responses.

Scale instantly for spikes in demand

Effortlessly scale your endpoints using preferred capacity at the edge.

Enhance API security and manage access

Protect your API endpoints. Move authentication from the origin to the edge.

How API Acceleration works

Offload

API Acceleration offloads requests from origin infrastructures to the edge.

Deliver

Cached responses and dynamic content route to the user via a close edge server or optimal path.

Secure

APIs are secured with scalable origin protection and a singular onboarding workflow.

Safeguard

If a failure occurs, API Acceleration switches from one origin to another to ensure availability.

Features

  • Offload API requests from origin infrastructures, balancing and routing for fast responses

  • Secure APIs by encrypting responses and moving authentication away from origin infrastructure

  • Control infrastructure costs with intelligent caching logic for REST and GraphQL

  • Give development teams serverless capabilities like authentication and API orchestration

  • 100% availability SLA: Achieve maximum API availability through even the highest traffic spikes

  • See real-time insights into key API performance indicators, dimensions, and trends

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

API acceleration refers to the process of increasing the speed, reliability, and availability of APIs and web APIs. Because APIs are used by so many different applications, any latency in processing responses can lead to significant lag or performance issues, which result in a poor experience for users. API acceleration strategies and technologies are designed to increase performance and availability, and deliver faster and better online user experiences.

API Acceleration works with XML, JSON, and other small transactional and programmatic traffic types.

API Acceleration offers many ways for developers to improve API functions, including:

  • Scale on demand: Effortlessly scale your endpoints for peaks using preferred capacity on the edge
  • High reliability: Drive down API response errors for high CPU traffic by utilizing specialized hardware on the edge
  • API response caching: Offload your origin through advanced caching logic for REST and GraphQL APIs
  • Authenticate: Authorize requests at the edge using JWT validation
  • CI/CD integrations: Seamlessly merge Akamai development with extant DevOps workflows with APIs for everything, as well as Akamai CLI
  • Serverless computing: Preconfigured and open computation directly at the edge for rapid delivery
  • Early-stage testing: Shift testing to the left so developers can proof their code early on
  • Fast purge and metadata activation: For rapid content and configuration changes

API Acceleration is beneficial for applications with:

  • Highly distributed users, such as a public API
  • Dynamic, non-cacheable content that has a high volume of requests
  • Asymmetric traffic flow, such as telemetry or beacons that often have more ingress than egress
  • Bidirectional communication between the app and origin, such as chat, gaming, or social media
  • B2B data feed, in some instances server to server, where demand originates from a concentrated location
  • Flash crowds that cause rapid spikes in requests, such as gate drop events, betting applications, and online auctions

Resources

Deploying Harper and Akamai Cloud. No longer using akamai connected cloud

Learn how to deploy HarperDB and Akamai Connected Cloud together for faster API performance and an unparalleled user experience.

Read blog

Scaling for API Peak Consumption

Discover how to prepare for peak demand by testing API performance under load.

View reference architecture

Modern API Architecture: Reference Architecture

Learn how Akamai can improve the user experience, increase availability, and strengthen the security posture of APIs.

View reference architecture
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Free Trial: API Acceleration

Your competitive edge starts now.

What difference can the world’s largest edge platform make for you? Take API Acceleration for a free test run and find out.

Terms and restrictions apply.

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